Which NHL teams employ “zone matching” the most?

With John Tortorella coming to Vancouver, I admit I’m quite curious as to how he stacks up compared to Alain Vigneault in “zone matching”, the practice of having your more offensive centremen take faceoffs in the offensive zone and your more defensive forwards take faceoffs in the defensive zone.

Thomas Drance made the point over at Canucks Army that Alain Vigneault is going to become very familiar with Brian Boyle this season. Boyle, like Manny Malhotra or Maxim Lapierre in Vancouver, took a large percentage of his faceoffs in the defensive end, while Brad Richards and Derek Stepan were left with a lot more offensive zone opportunities.

Example… in Vancouver, Henrik Sedin started 330 shifts in the offensive zone and 188 in the defensive. That’s a difference of +142. Lapierre was 90 in the offensive zone and 251 in the defensive zone, for a difference of -161. The overall difference between +142 and -161 is 303. I’d do this for every team.

Does zone matching help your team? I think if you strike the right balance. The goal is to keep your most offensive players away from the top defensive players on the other team. Sometimes the personnel works, sometimes it doesn’t.

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